


No Children

by whereismygarden



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-06
Updated: 2016-06-06
Packaged: 2018-07-12 13:58:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7108036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whereismygarden/pseuds/whereismygarden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You can always be let down, even if you've spent most of your life carefully not being an idealist.</p><p>Sharon Carter sees the fall of SHIELD.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Children

**Author's Note:**

> "I wish that I could have loved you then  
> Before our age was through  
> And before a world war does with us whatever it will do." 
> 
> \--Arcade Fire, "City With No Children"
> 
> "I am drowning, there is no sign of land  
> You are coming down with me, hand in unlovable hand."
> 
> \--The Mountain Goats, "No Children"

                The world is a complicated place. Sharon learns to conceal a holster under the unforgiving lines of pink nurse’s scrubs. Her shoes are a cross between high-top sneakers and hiking boots, so that she can keep a knife at her ankle. She doesn’t have to fake the tired looks she gives Steve: the fatigue of working odd shifts at the ER as Kate is the same kind of fatigue Sharon gets as she sneaks around DC.

~

                She knew he was handsome: she was raised on his picture, on the stories her cousins got too old, or too sad, for. She knew he was good. Not in the way of 60s comic strips or 80s cartoons based on the legend of Captain America, but because she trusted Aunt Peggy.

                Her dad was too young to remember the war very well, and she was born when he was no longer a young man. Aunt Peggy was already old by the time Sharon was old enough to pester her about work. She was old and knew how the world worked and didn’t bother to talk prettily about war. Part of it was to discourage Sharon, but was what she supposed to do? Go become a doctor? A teacher? An artist? All she knew was the feeling of the exercise mat that Aunt Peggy had been knocking her onto since she was six, and the small gun at the shooting range, and stories about a shield so strong it could deflect artillery fire.

                In middle school, Sharon was suspended four times for fighting. Her mother made her join softball and math team and go to martial arts. It was an effort to sap her energy for fighting. It worked, but only because she was at practice after school instead of loitering by the gas station store to pick fights with the bigger kids. She still got in fights over the weekend, but all that happened was the manager came out to scream at them and chase them off the property.

                “Bullies are bad,” she insisted to her mother. That’s what she learned from the comic strips’ and the cartoons’ _and_ Aunt Peggy’s Captain America. Mom just sighed and gave her ice in a washcloth.

                “You’re not Aunt Peggy. You don’t need to go look for the bullies,” she replied. Her mother saw what Sharon really was, which was angry and lonely and ready for an excuse to fight.

                But she did go looking for the bullies. Sharon worried all the time. She fretted about the war, and the Cold War, and saving the whales, and the fact that Tricia Keyes was constantly pushing around the sixth graders. Tricia Keyes was a solvable problem, even if she had to solve it by breaking Tricia’s nose with her face.

                Aunt Peggy told her that anyone could brawl, but change took more than that. It took planning and tactics and dedication. So in high school, Sharon studied and studied. She hit punching bags and fired at targets every free minute. Her path was set out before her. She was going to join SHIELD. She was going to continue on with what Aunt Peggy did. She was going to see the world the way Aunt Peggy did, in all its complexity, not in terms like East and West and Us and Them.

                She joined SHIELD and formally changed her last name to her mother’s maiden name. Sharon Kravitz. “You don’t look Jewish,” people told her all the time, and she gave them pained smiles or flat looks, depending on her mood. No one said, “You look like Peggy Carter,” so she counted it as a win. Only Director Fury knew who she was, and he just told her, “You’re even more idealistic than she was,” and didn’t say anything when she scoffed. SHIELD was not a place for idealism.

                Agent 13 was assigned to Captain Steven Rogers when he moves to DC. He was going to lead missions with Rumlow’s STRIKE team. Sharon thought they would work well together. No one was as devoted to SHIELD as Rumlow, anyway.

~

                She sees him for the first time, and is a charming, tired nurse. He is tired, as good a man as Peggy had described. She can see it. Peggy once said, “There aren’t many men like that anymore. Even then, there weren’t many men like that.” Sharon isn’t sure whether that was nostalgia or not from Aunt Peggy: she was no romantic, but anyone could fall into wishing for better days. But her aunt was—is—right. There aren’t many men like him, and maybe there never have been. A thousand years ago, people would be saying “Back in the good old days that’s how people were.”

                He’s handsome, in his good, black-and-white way. She feels sick to her stomach for noticing, and wants to cry for Aunt Peggy, because Sharon isn’t stupid, even though she loves her cousins and loved her uncle. Time and history are a bitch. Sharon would know. Not because she knows much about time, or even history, but she knows about being a bitch.

                Noticing that he’s handsome makes it easy for Kate to talk to him, smile at him. Kate does not care that he’s Captain America, except in a way that makes Kate worry for him, Sharon decides. Kate is just as nice as a person can be. Steve Rogers matches her politeness step for step. It’s exhausting. Sharon thinks that Steve-Rogers-to-his-neighbors must be the most boring man to live. She wishes she could go into SHIELD and see him there.

                She tells Rumlow how wholesome and private and reservedly friendly Rogers is. Brock lifts his head from where he’s trying to bite _through_ her skin to her collarbone, rubs his bristly face against her neck. Maybe she shouldn’t bring up Rogers while Rumlow is fucking her against a wall during her brief time off.

                “There haven’t been any assassination attempts, either,” she says. “You’d think someone would be after him.”

                They talk shop when they do this, because what else can they talk about?

                “He gets them all on missions,” Brock says, one gun-rough hand digging harsh into her thigh. “If surveillance is so boring and he’s so great, why aren’t you doing this with him?” There are a million reasons, beyond that it is in conflict with her assignment. She shoves her back against the wall and her hips into Brock’s and guides his head so that he can leave dark crescents down and across her chest.

                “I mean,” he says, murmuring into her ear like he’s slick—he is, Brock Rumlow is tall and dark and driven and sometimes mean and Sharon really likes him—or something, “I’d fuck him.” That makes her shiver, and him growl and lean in. Sharon thinks that this whole situation could get strange and not in a very good way, and smacks him lightly on the side of the head.

                “In your dreams, Rumlow,” she tells him.

                “We could do you together,” he says, eyes fierce. It is definitely getting strange and not in the good way, even though it’s running down her spine with a frisson like fighting dirty in the girls’ bathroom at age fourteen did.

                “Don’t get weird,” she orders, and unwraps one leg from around his waist and kicks off against the wall, knocking them both to the ground. It jars, even though Brock always lands like a professional should. They both wince, take a moment, and Sharon holds him down by his arms, until there are bruises covering his biceps. They writhe on the thin carpet, until he has a bloody lip and she has bite marks everywhere Kate’s uniform will cover.

                “Yeah, I’m the weird one,” he pants, and they half-grin at each other for a moment. Sharon pulls the scrubs back on. She is back on Rogers-duty in half an hour. She takes it very seriously, even if no one has come calling to kill him yet. Rumlow lies on his back and licks his bloody lip.

~

                The world is a simple place. She chooses Aunt Peggy’s Steve over SHIELD, and he didn’t appreciate her necessary dishonesty. Old-fashioned, black-and-white man: Sharon can’t blame him, when she’s sick with the revelation that her calling is just so much cover for HYDRA. Things are less black-and-white than even she told herself. Or more, maybe.

                The STRIKE team is HYDRA, Steve says, and Brock puts her on the ground with a kick and a knife cut. She shoots him, rounds impacting on his tactical vest.

                Sharon’s at the hospital to see him, chained unconscious to his bed, burned unrecognizable, when they bring in Steve. Agent Romanoff sticks her head into the room. Sharon can’t read her, but she knows all about her now. The world knows all about them all, now. Brock breathes through a clear plastic tube. He knew. He knew all along. He knew, he knew.

                “There are always gonna be friends on the other side, when things go down,” she says, face inscrutable. Then she goes to check on Steve.

                Sharon goes to break the news to Aunt Peggy, thinking about the way that war really is, and pressing her fingers down on a fading bruise on her hip. Now she knows, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Trying to figure out Sharon Carter. I don't read Cap comics, so this is based on what is in the movies only.


End file.
